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Visual disorientation with special reference to lesions of the right cerebral hemisphere. By W. Russell Brain (From the Neurological Department, London Hospital) Brain 1941: 64; 244–272.
Cambridge
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Writing during the Second World War, Russell Brain's starting point is the clarity provided by examples of penetrating head wounds for understanding the specific effects of focal brain injury on visual disorientation, uncomplicated by diffuse pathology and uncontaminated by other perceptual disorders. He takes as his authority cases from the Great War described by George Riddoch and by Gordon Holmes describing failure to localize objects in space; inability accurately to judge relative length, distance or size and to-and-fro movement; failure of topographical orientation; and inability to bisect a line—but only in the context of biparietal lesions. From neurologists placed on the other side of the trenches had come the observations that visual field defects are usually present when the erroneous perceptions are exposed by comparison of two objects, whereas the fields are full when the visual disorientations are absolute. Each results in ‘optical ataxia’ for objects and ‘Optisch-raümliche Agnosien’ for